Karen Guth’s complex and thoughtful analysis of tainted legacies builds on her previous exploration of a question, in a 2015 article for the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, that has disturbed the field of Christian ethics: what do we do with the tainted legacy of influential Christian ethicist and serial sexual predator John Howard Yoder?
In The Ethics of Tainted Legacies: Human Flourishing after Traumatic Pasts, Guth draws on four cases to explore the problem of tainted legacies—responses to sexual abuse highlighted in the “me too” movement; the controversy over confederate monuments; responses to the legacy of slavery in colleges and universities; and the struggle within the field of Christian ethics and the Mennonite community to deal appropriately with the legacy of John Howard Yoder. Guth uses these four cases to analyze the problem of tainted legacies, which, as she rightly notes, is “a distinct moral problem not yet theorized in philosophical or religious ethics” (26).
Guth offers a careful account of the problem of tainted legacies drawing on literature around psychological trauma and then develops a remarkably helpful typology of ways to approach tainted legacies that is relevant not only in the field of Christian ethics, but also (perhaps even more so) in the larger culture. Deniers “reject the problem outright” or minimize its importance (64). Separationists attempt to avoid the problem by “positing a neat distinction between the violation and its instigator,” allowing them to reject the acts of perpetrators while continuing to draw on their work (67). Abolitionists reject the separationists’ distinction and want to reject both the perpetrator and the work (69). Revisionists also dismiss the separationists’ distinction between the perpetrator and the work, but instead of an outright rejection, they call for a renewed examination of the person and work to find new insights—considering, for example, whether Yoder’s theology is somehow linked with his predation (75). Redeemers “seek to witness the atrocity, acknowledge mistakes of the past, and issue hope for a better future” (79).
Finally, Guth delineates her preferred type, the Reformer, who attempts to bring together the gifts of some of the previous models and move beyond them in several ways, all while seeking to transform the larger social and institutional realities that made possible and supported the original infractions. Guth acknowledges that a typology “inevitably oversimplifies complex positions,” and she seeks to minimize this problem by outlining the complexity of each category and their overlap with other categories (62).
With her typology, Guth organizes the various options that are often voiced in popular culture and in academic discourse as tainted legacies are confronted. And with the Reformer position, Guth offers a new alternative that is then developed over four chapters—each of which uses insights from trauma studies as well as womanist and feminist reflections on biblical and theological traditions, traditions that are themselves tainted legacies, to examine the four cases. This is classic Guth. As with her previous book Christian Ethics at the Boundary: Feminism and Theologies of Public Life (Fortress Press, 2015), Guth displays a gift for setting up instructive typologies, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each position, and then, building on the framework and gifts of some of the types, crafts an alternative model that draws on the other types and improves upon them. Most helpfully, she places the contemporary problem of tainted legacies within a larger and more ancient field of view, attending to Christian understandings of human nature, sin, grace, and redemption.
Guth brings clarity to a very complex contemporary problem, bringing texts and ideas from the field into conversation with the important ethical issues around tainted legacies. This is original work that not only benefits the field of Christian ethics, but also the larger social contexts from which these tainted legacies and any possible remedies will emerge. This book is accessible while also being challenging, both in the depth of its insight and the seriousness of the problems addressed.
Rebekah Miles is the Susanna Wesley Professor of Practical Theology and Ethics at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University.
Rebekah Miles
Date Of Review:
February 27, 2023